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Biblical numerology was never intended to be taken literally. You're supposed read the number of years and think, "oh, right. That doesn't really mean X years. That means Y alternate meaning."

e.g. The number 7 means completeness and perfection, and the number 40 means a period of testing.

When numbers are added or multiplied in the bible, you're not supposed to try to use algebra.
X plus Y means "both the meaning of X and the meaning of Y",
X times Y means something similar to addition, but it adds extra emphasis.

Anyone who believes in a literal 6000 year old earth because of the Bible needs to go take a required freshman Bible Studies class at a religious university ASAP. It doesn't matter which one you pick. They'll all tell you you're wrong if you think the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old, and then they'll teach you the context/meaning of all of those numbers.

Biblical numerology was never intended to be taken literally. You're supposed read the number of years and think, "oh, right. That doesn't really mean X years. That means Y alternate meaning."

e.g. The number 7 means completeness and perfection, and the number 40 means a period of testing.

When numbers are added or multiplied in the bible, you're not supposed to try to use algebra.
X plus Y means "both the meaning of X and the meaning of Y",
X times Y means something similar to addition, but it adds extra emphasis.

Anyone who believes in a literal 6000 year old earth because of the Bible needs to go take a required freshman Bible Studies class at a religious university ASAP. It doesn't matter which one you pick. They'll all tell you you're wrong if you think the Bible says the earth is 6000 years old, and then they'll teach you the context/meaning of all of those numbers.

Minor nitpick. The commandment is mistranslated as "Thou shalt not kill" but it should be closer translated to "You will not murder". In the case you speak of however, it does not make a difference, though I can see justification of it in that they are trying to stop the future murder of many of unborn children, I still do not agree, and any proper christian would not do it. Here is a good summation of the difference between kill and murder:

http://www.biblestudy.org/question/what-does-thou-shall-not-kill-mean.html

If the interpretation finds itself at odds with the rest of scripture, I would call it erroneous.

At odds with an interpretation you accept of the rest of scripture, you mean?

Only if you skip the parts about His covenants, which man violated,

The problem is first, this doesn't always seem to be the case, and second, the punishment is nearly always disproportionate to the crime -- what we'd call "cruel and unusual" in our human justice systems. Worse, often God punishes people who were not involved at all.

Take 1 Chronicles 21:9-14. First, why punish David at all? The closest I could find to an explanation was this. Seriously? According to that page, David's being punished because knowing the strength of his armies could lead him to sin? Or maybe God just hates that it was Satan's idea -- assuming that is, indeed, the more accurate translation.

Whatever the excuse given, I can't find God ever telling David he couldn't conduct a census, especially given that Gideon was allowed to count his armies. What "covenant" was being broken here?

Even if it was wrong, David counted some people. He. Counted. People. In what morality is that such a horrible crime as to justify slaughtering 70,000 of God's own chosen people?!

And God didn't even punish David. He punished David's people. Sure, that punishes David indirectly, but that means 70,000 people who did nothing wrong were punished for the crimes of one person. Were these 70k sinful in some other way? Perhaps, but it's pretty clear they're not being punished for that, they're being punished for David.

...and his perfect judgement and his holiness.

That's what I was talking about with the second bit you quoted. But if you simply take the Bible as historical fact, you don't know God is perfectly just and holy. All you really know is that he says he is, and that some people said he was -- and that's the perspective I'm using here.

If you just accept a priori that God is good and just, then this entire discussion is pretty much useless, because you've already made up your mind before you turned a single page of that book.

when you speak of Hitler's injustice, surely you are appealing to some absolute, internal sense of justice which you assume I share?

I'm appealing to whatever sense of justice you have. Most people base theirs on a simple moral intuition, or on some basic principles.

I left out one or two logical steps because I thought they were self-evident-- "If the bible is not true, then God is not a capable judge of any and all who sin; if he is not a capable judge, then justice is not done by his actions...."

And that exposes the fallacy I wouldn't have made: "if he is not a capable judge, then justice is not done by his actions..." That's a non-sequitur. If he's not a capable judge, he might do just things anyway by accident. All that follows is that "he is just" is no longer a justification for declaring his actions to be just.

No, my premise is that you cannot simply define God as just by fiat

I can get there from the premise that he is the creator,

Not just from that, you can't...

..."just" appeals to an absolute created by him.

Aside from the point that there are standards of justice independent of any deity which we generally share, I don't think this helps you. He could well have created a standard and then chose to be unjust by his own standard. After all, he's the one who wrote "Thou shalt not kill," and he has by far the highest body count of any character in the Bible.

I'd also like you to show me this, because I don't see it in Genesis.

There's an o

> Citizens were required to pay a flat tax of 10% of all earnings.

Actually, it is more like twenty three percent. There were three tithes. http://www.biblestudy.org/bibleref/tithe-in-bible/ chapter3.html
10% pa for the levites, 10% pa for festivals, and 10% every three years for the poor.

> These taxes went to the religious state...

No. 10% pa was for the levites, but not all levites could be priests, only the descendants of Aaron. The real reason the levites got 10%pa was because they got no allocation of land when the twelve tribes settled in the promised land.

>...whose responsibility it was to provide judicial, executive, and legislative services

Are you sure you're not reading the American constitution into the OT?

> Further on, according to the Bible, in Christian communities this developed into an entirely socialist system, where resources were jointly held and distributed by a central authority. Failure to comply was punishable by death.

No. Failure to comply was not punishable by death. A husband and wife were punished by death when they voluntarily sold property, voluntarily handed a proportion of the proceeds over to the Apostles, but lied to them by saying they had given the whole proceeds. AFAIK there were no socialist systems in the NT. Socialism implies compulsion. There was no compulsion. Perhaps you mean they were like communes?

Why shouldn't you? If you only care about the here and now then there's nothing I can really tell you. I read enough scriptures from the Qu'ran to be scared of it. Which version of the Tripitaka? From what I've read there are like 5,000 versions and the number of versions is still growing. Also some sects pick and choose what portion to follow. If the entire book isn't worth following than it raises suspicions in my mind. We don't know what Jesus' words where with his final breath. But the some of last words before his death are recorded in the Gospels. Luke explicitly claims not to record Jesus' last words and John has no account of Jesus' last words or events. I'm curious on this one, where are the errors of the order in which the species were created? Here's a link to help you with the translation errors. http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/kjverror.html And on the note that if God wants you saved he'll do it. God gave us free will. You have a choice in the matter. If Christians all had perfect lives than who wouldn't be a Christian, which would negate free will. If God were hanging out here on earth how could you deny God, again there would be no free will. God wants you to you to love Him because you want to, not because he forces you to.

Sorry for taking so long to respond. I often don't get a chance to check Slashdot on the weekend.

You say every person has that choice. The very act of creating a path where its either my way or burn is evil. It doesn't matter how what lables you create or attach to the being who creates it.

You do realize that a Paradise that wasn't God's home did exist at one time, right? The Garden of Eden that the Bible speaks of was supposed to be an eternal home for Adam and Eve. His only requirement in giving this home was, "But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die." Well, we all know how that ended, don't we?

So, now we die. When we die, our soul is loosed from this Earth. I don't entirely understand the difference between Sheol and Hell, but the two places do seem to be different. Sheol seems to be an "eternal slumber", or a ceasation of existence. This would be as per the convenent given to Adam and Eve. As the sons and daughters of Adam and Eve, we could theoretically chose this. But we instead tend to sell ourselves to the devil's temptations and thus must be sentenced to the same punishment as him. As an alternative, God opened the doors of His home for us. He sent his Son to pay the price of our sins so that we may join him.

In other words, there is the possibility of a death without God or the devil, but this is pretty much impossible for humans to achieve. Given the choice, we always give in to sinful temptations.

How about Corinthians 1 11:3-9 ?

This is a really difficult verse, as the full context has been long been lost to us. Literally it would seem that Paul is suggesting that women should cover their heads in service so that they may revel in their womanhood. i.e. Long hair is a glory to a woman, so should be her head covering. One way or another, it referred to only the mode of worship, and not of day to day life.

We obviously don't use head coverings as the chosen form of symbology in today's culture. Rather, women usually wear an attractive dress and men try to wear an attractive suit and tie. You could reverse the two, but they'd seem kind of disrespectful to the church proceedings. (As was Paul's point.)

As for the woman "being of the man", here is what I personally read from that. His point is that woman was created to be a companion to man and was given the gift of bearing children. That is her glory and honor to do so. It is not a requirement for her (the whole "subjegation" idea is simply wrong; women have a free will as well), but simply a matter of being true to one's self. He is certainly not saying, "women are second class citizens of the world." He is saying that women do honor to themselves by using symbology to represent the fact that they are women. Or in other words, it's a pure and wonderful thing if women act feminine.

So from that, is it "wrong" if a woman wants to act manly? Well, no. There's no, "thou shalt never act masculine" anywhere in the Bible. Woman are free to make their own choices.

There's a rather pleasent right up on the entire thing here. It's written by a woman, so you may find the interpretation to be of interest.

In my own life, I have always treated my wife with full respect, and I see her as an equal in our relationship. I have never pushed the idea of "being the head of the family" despite the fact that it often works that way. (We recently ribbed our lawyer about all of the legal documents having my name before hers. I think his heart skipped a beat before he realized we were kidding him, and that the issue really didn't matter to us.) My wife and I are "of one flesh" and are equals in our relationship. And I'm sure my wife would be along to kick your butt if you suggest otherwise. ;-)

God could have easily struck the Pharoh dead with a bolt of lignten

The Longevity of the Patriarchs

Let me preface this by saying I am a devout Christian... You don't. You get three days and three nights from sunset Wednesday evening to sunset Saturday evening. The confusion originated centuries ago with people who were not familiar with God's holy days (the Jewish passover in this case) See http://www.biblestudy.org/basicart/threeday.html for more info

Remember, everything you read in the bible is true!